I come hither not to die, nor to live. This journey I take is neither penance nor punishment. The destination no more fitting a place to wile away eternity than any other, but far better than that place that all souls, sinner or saint, fear most. If you have come to meddle in my case, I pray that you judge for the best. There is little point in anything else. This journey will go on, no matter.
We go to Blickling Hall, Norfolk this dusky eve, for it is nineteenth of May and what must be, has come to pass long since. The coachman drives hard, it’s true, but we will make good time, the winds of hell at our back. A good thing too, as my father has need of this same carriage. He and I pass every year on this date. I to return to the place of my birth, even if the brick and mortar are younger than I, and he to leave its shelter to chase the night and outrun the cockcrow dawn. There are many bridges to cross between Aylsham and Wroxham and cross them all he must, though only the good Lord knows why. He and I are long beyond pushing against the tiller of fate.
Do not look out of the window, my dear friend. The night will show you naught but horrors. There are wild hunters out this night, and the dead are always in need of company. I will not share you with the shadows. Do not avert your eyes from me either. It has been too long since I’ve anyone to talk to. Your mind shies from the sight of me as I am, I fear. But I am as death has made of me. No more and no less. What are any of us, I ask of you, if not greater than our constituent parts? My fate was to be sundered; my life chopped short according to the law, and by the law I was judged, my youth made forfeit. My head may no longer ride upon my shoulders, but I assure you I have kept my wits.
You know me, even if my true face has been forgotten, stricken from the record. But let us not stand on ceremony. My name has ridden the centuries to reach your ear. I was fated to marry my cousin and reside as a lady of Ireland, but ambition led me on a merry path to higher and lower places. I set my eye on a duke and fell far short before a crown sat upon my head. I kept that not long. Alas, my little neck could not take the weight. Soon crown and head both toppled. I ask that you not judge me ill that I could keep neither. When the toll of fate is asked, we all must pay up.
Do not fear the jostle of the carriage. We ride the night with the wild things. This is my eve. I return to a place I never lived to walk galleries and linger within libraries that pretend to remember me. I am history’s bride now. On this day I was, and will be, put to death, in an endless parade of once and forevermore. I travel in haste to nowhere for no purpose. I march to history’s tune. I am here and there and nowhere. Is this fate, I ask, or merely what happens to those of us whom fate has used for sport?
HA. HA. You flinch at laughter, do you? Would it surprise you to know I once proudly proclaimed myself the most happy? There were many who derided me. HA. HA. Initials that begged ridicule. In the jeers of the common folk lurked the whispers of my fate. I claimed much, but delivered little and according to the law, and by the law, I was judged to die.
Now I am to be neither judged nor offered reprieve. I ride the night, a passenger on a pointless journey. I wander the halls of Blickling and I wait for the dawn of the day I died as if waiting for life anew. Yet like Tantalus, resurrection dangles before me, just out of reach. My father will cross twelve bridges, racing for absolution that will never come for he or I, but I am resigned to ride toward lost home, my wins and losses all in the past.
You know me, I am Anne. I held the heart of a king and then I lost my head. I hold that now in my lap, but of my fate, I never had control. I once thought that I did. I who charmed rival kings under canopies of gold and danced in yellow to celebrate death. I made enemies, but it was my lover who killed me. I will speak nothing against that. The Frenchmen’s blade has silenced my tongue on that tale. History has never cared for truth, and my fate was not cast in innocence so let those dark deeds be unremarked upon in this place. Our mad journey shall be all the more pleasant for it.
I wonder when I will take my leave of this world. Every May nineteenth should be my last, but never is. This carriage and its headless horseman always find me and carry me forth to Blickling Hall. The horses run heedless through eternal night, taking me to a home that was never mine, to walls that never sheltered my swaddled self, to memories that lay claim to my legacy all the same. Anna Bolena hic 1507. Or was it 1501? It matters not, I have been dead more years than I could ever have hoped to live. The queen is dead, long live the queen, indeed. I have ever been Fortuna’s puppet.
You ride with me to witness fate’s long reach, I suspect. Destiny wants to display her handiwork. This is what happens when memories do not die, when the reach of time stretches too far. When that which is done, is not allowed to be over. O lord have mercy upon me, would that God have pity on my soul. This is a tiresome fate, to exist enshrined in the minds of distant strangers. I was once a pariah queen, now I am ascended to myth and mystery. This carriage, this night, the coachman and his headless steads, we are all prisoners of time out of joint. We are stories undying. Fragments of a greater truth that alludes even me.
I keep my head, regardless. I was taught deportment in the court of Queen Claude. I learned my letters in France, where style ruled even kings. You will note how well I carry my head, neat and tidy, in the crook of my arm. You will note the finery of my carriage – and it is mine, no matter what my father uses it for. The headless horse man always comes for me first.
HA. HA. Initials entwined, a joke that was made in earnest. A union that in these confines cannot be sundered. That which was, remains here. I have become a constant, in the way that all things past are. It could be said that in death I have learned my place. Unlike my father, who runs too late. History remembers him far more poorly than I. His fate is to race from his home as if time might favour him, but all know that he hid as two of his children lost their heads.
My death has been gentler, I must admit. I travel. I am rarely tormented, as once I was in life. Sometimes I go to Marwell Hall, where I preamble upon lawns that once my husband trod with she who would replace me, while in life, I waited to die. Because even in death I am not without a sense of humour. There is some merit in roaming those paths, when his and her footsteps are stilled forever. Ambition failed me, but history has become my friend. It has written me into stories not mine, long after my own was severed.
Hever was my home, where Blickling was not. I reside there at Christmas, where my oak waits for my return. We two relics of history reunite from time to time. History keeps my memories now, and time shares them freely with strange new friends like you.
The tower was my prison and my doom, I prefer to travel far from its chapel and its sombre stone keep. But sometimes, I will linger in the quiet places where my prayers did not ascend. Do not ask me of the green. The scaffold. The coin for the French swordsman. The blindfold. The crowd who watched me lose more than my crown. I took my leave of that moment at least, and while Jesu has yet to receive my soul, I must still give praise for small mercies. Should you look upon the green, you will not find me there.
We are past Aylsham now. Soon we will arrive at Blickling Hall. The grip of time is a strange thing, is it not? How fast it runs and yet, like a dry riverbed, it can also leave no mark upon the land. It clutches tight to me, I confess, but its imprint can be light as the syllables of old place names. Meaningless and trite.
This land is ancient, but its roads are unfamiliar. I was born here, and yet I will always be a stranger abroad. There is no help for it, alas. This coach races its own course. The headless horseman knows his path. The vagaries of a changing world mean nothing to one who is fated to roam. Not that we speak of such things, of course. He has no head for conversation.
I used to like to talk, to laugh, to enjoy good company and fine entertainment. Some may say this was my undoing. They would be wrong. Life runs as it will and death claims all, even if, in my case, I have been forced to take a meandering path toward eternal rest. We are none of us masters of our fate, and the great wheel is always turning. It raises us high and drops us low.
It is a shame you did not join me at Hever, we could have been merry there. It is good you did not meet me in the corridors of Windsor. I am quite the terror there. I have a temper, you see. I quite lose my head at times. O, do laugh. I may be a headless horror but that is no reason to be so dour. This ride will not last forever and one must always laugh while one may. None of us know what tomorrow brings, and some are fated to never see the dawn.
Here we come. Blickling Hall. We shall make quite the entrance, as is only proper. The coachman may not be pleasant to look upon, but he leaves an impression. Here comes my father, running from his sins, racing against the dawn. I require you not to judge him too harshly. It matters not, for he and I, for good or ill, are beyond your prayers or your condemnation.
I leave you now with these words only, if you would meddle in my case, I require you to judge the best, for fate is uncaring, and history relentless. All too quick, can one be lost in fortune’s merciless hands. I heartily desire that you, kind soul, shall never know what it is to rise too high, to blaze too bright, lest you too suffer the fate of the unforgotten.
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ALDLIS CHRONICLES 